School Choice Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

School Choice - Article Example One disturbing consequence of high stakes testing is the reduction or elimination of activities that are not tested. Teachers feel that they cannot spend time on such things as class meetings to promote decision-making, discussing current events and interdisciplinary projects and even recess. Whatever is not in the test gets eliminated. Just as students who are only interested in grades are famous for asking if they have to know something, now teachers who are only teaching to test are asking ‘do we have to teach this?’. When testing at a given grade is limited to Math and language arts then the other subjects such as science, social studies, and art suffer. This has created a new difficulty for teaching and teachers because if they are only teaching a subject for the test then this may lead to poor teaching. On the other hand, some teachers may choose to have their subjects tested just so that they can keep the subject on the curriculum Kohn refers to this as ‘bar gaining with the devil’. It can mean that the curriculum gets twisted to fit into the testing mode. As one language arts teacher is reported to have said that the class has not been doing any reading since they started to prepare for the reading test. Other subjects are suffering the same fate. These facts and information are soon forgotten. There is a disturbing consequence where good teaching means poor test preparation and conversely preparing for the test encourages the worst kind of teaching.